BT announced the selection of Ciena’s Waveserver stackable datacenter interconnect (DCI) platform to grow capacity and support the demands of FTTP and 5G. Ciena solution empowers BT with reduced cost via improved efficiency and gain the ability to rapidly scale the network.

“This deployment marks a significant step forward for UK telecoms. Today’s service providers are turning to tailor-made solutions that add capacity and programmability features with greater power and efficiency, enabling reduced cost per bit. With Ciena’s Waveserver platform, BT is creating a more adaptive network that can adjust as needed to meet changing subscriber demands,” noted Jamie Jefferies, Vice President & General Manager, EMEA, Ciena.

The plan is for BT to roll out 5G across 16 cities over the course of 2019, which means explosive growth in capacity demands. Ciena’s Waveserver promises rapid scalability, ease of deployment and a capacity of 2.4T per stackable device – beyond supporting virtual machine migration, high-speed data transfer as well as disaster recovery and backup between data centers.

Further, BT will also deploy the Blue Planet Manage, Control and Plan to address orchestration and automation goals. In addition, the Blue Planet MCP solution will support easier, more rapid deployment of the Waveserver solution.

“We are launching 5G in 2019 across the busiest parts of 16 UK cities, and our FTTP footprint is growing on a daily basis. We have to stay ahead of the massive traffic growth that this brings, and the Ciena DCI platform ensures we can do that – quickly, making maximum use of automation,” explained Neil J. McRae, Chief Architect, BT.

Web-scale Networking

The idea of Web-scale IT is more than just another 'hot' buzzword or problematic disruption. What started with data center operators has become mainstream thinking in large enterprises, and it's now driving changes in service provider operations, as well. Web-scale tools that allow application development to move quickly have also created some challenges for service provider networks.